On the 2025 ASH Annual Assembly, CURE sat down for an interview with researcher Dr. Josh Brody to debate the findings of a scientific trial which discovered that the mix of Epkinly (epcoritamab) with the chemotherapies gemcitabine plus oxaliplatin (GemOx) achieved sturdy remissions of longer than two years amongst sufferers with relapsed/refractory diffuse giant B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) within the second-line setting.
Brody runs the lymphoma remedy program on the Icahn Faculty of Drugs at Mount Sinai in New York.
Transcript
For sufferers with DLBCL, what unmet want do you hope to handle by combining Epkinly with GemOx?
We’re very fortunate for diffuse giant B-cell lymphoma that we’re capable of treatment a majority of individuals with frontline remedy. That is nice information. We in all probability treatment 55%, 60% of individuals with customary chemoimmunotherapy. So that’s nice information when you’re a type of 60 individuals. And for the opposite 40, there may be nonetheless plenty of unmet want.
And one factor that is a giant deal in that second line of therapies is CAR-T cells. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Individuals who would possibly have the ability to get CAR-T cell remedy within the second line, only for often logistical or sensible causes, should not capable of get it, and there are plenty of hurdles to getting CAR-T cells. Stem cell transplant can also be a factor as a second line remedy, that is based mostly on PARMA knowledge from 1994, that is the previous trial. The advantages of stem cell transplant in comparison with the unwanted side effects is a troublesome name with all these trendy therapies. The objective of this new, extra trendy, off-the-shelf immunotherapy method, combining a bispecific antibody, [Epkinly], on this case, a CD20xCD3 bispecific antibody.
So to elucidate what that’s, it grabs the lymphoma cells and grabs your immune cells, your T cells, and makes your immune cells kill your lymphoma cells. So, a chic idea. They’ve plenty of knowledge on this and diffuse giant B-cell lymphoma and others. However regardless that they’re fairly good as monotherapy, these bispecific antibodies, they need to be higher with standard-of-care remedy. So combining that immunotherapy with customary chemotherapy, we noticed the whole remission charges had been drastically improved in comparison with chemo alone, and likewise so much larger than the immunotherapy alone. Full remission charges on this [Epkinly]/GemOx examine that we’re presenting right here had been about 60%, that is like 25% with chemo, or possibly 40% with the immunotherapy, taking pictures as much as 60%. Nearly all of persons are getting full remissions, and these are individuals for whom a number of different medicines (aggressive chemotherapies, and even CAR-T) have failed. So, to get that top efficacy was nice.
The medicines had been, total, nicely tolerated. I do not wish to oversell the chemotherapy, in and of itself it has some unwanted side effects, dangers of low immune system, dangers of infections; however total, they had been nicely tolerated, and including the immunotherapy solely made a bit of little bit of enhance within the unwanted side effects. Plenty of additional bang, only for a bit of bit additional buck total. These had been gratifying outcomes for our sufferers with later-line DLBCL.
Transcript has been edited for readability and conciseness.
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